Bahia revises protection program after murder of Mãe Bernadete
The state government of Bahia is reviewing all protocols for the protection of human rights activists following the murder of Maria Bernadete Pacífico, also known as Mãe Bernadete. The Candomblé priestess and quilombo leader was killed last Thursday (Aug. 17) inside her home in the Pitanga dos Palmares quilombo, in the municipality of Simões Filho.
According to the northeastern state’s Secretary of Justice and Human Rights Felipe Freitas, teams from the state government and the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship are working to improve protection efforts alongside public security agencies.
“The death of a human rights advocate is a tragedy—even more so considering she’d been facing threats. The federal government and the government of Bahia are obviously revising all protection protocols, not just in Bahia but throughout Brazil. A tragedy like this should make us improve the program, the protection measures, and policing operations throughout the country,” he told Agência Brasil on Sunday (20).
According to Freitas, team members have been deployed to step up the security of local activists. Family members of Mãe Bernadete were removed from the Pitanga do Palmares quilombo.
A quilombo is a community originally founded by black people fleeing slavery during Brazil’s colonial period.
In a press release, the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship said that this week the members of the coordination of the Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders will be in Bahia for “appointments aimed at strengthening the protection program in the state.” Federal officials should visit threatened communities and gather information to revamp policies.
“The most important thing at the moment is to prioritize the investigations. The first step in a thorough revision of protection programs is to find out who executed Mãe Bernadete. The entire civil police are mobilized. Our obligation is to provide an answer to this case and further bolster the policy for preventing violence and protecting those who feel threatened,” Secretary Felipe Freitas argued.
As it stands today, 94 human rights champions—including quilombo residents, indigenous people and rural workers—are under protection in Bahia, with 25 under analysis.
Violent country
“Brazil’s a really violent country. Unfortunately, states that have natural wealth, major mineral assets, are the object of intense disputes between economic power and traditional communities. Bahia is one of the states with the largest number of indigenous and quilombola communities, and this means there’s a strong dispute over their territorial rights,” Freitas noted.
A survey released in June by the Network of Security Observatories, fostered by state public security departments, already pointed to Bahia as the second Brazilian state with the most cases of violence against members of traditional communities. Second only to Pará, in the North, Bahia recorded 428 victims of violence between 2017 and 2022.
Mãe Bernadete had been in the protection program since 2017 when her son Binho do Quilombo was murdered. Security cameras were installed in her home and the military police made rounds in Pitanga dos Palmares. She received daily visits, Freitas reported, sometimes more than once a day, and had the telephone numbers of officers working in the area.
